I played quite a few games over winter break to catch up on all the ones I missed while in New York. I’ve decided to give some real quick one to two sentence impressions in bullet point format (that makes it Professional®).

Fable 3 – This was fun, but overall a big step backwards after Fable 2. And the ending is astonishingly anti-climactic.

Vanquish – A very fun, frenetic shooter with hilarious how-Japanese-writers-think-Americans-talk-but-really-only-know-how-Americans-talk-from-action-movies. To wit: ‘Maybe you’re just getting better at looking like an ass hole!’

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood – I didn’t realize how much I wanted another Assassin’s Creed game until I played this phenomenal improvement on just about everything from AC2. And I completely regret having rented it because I really want to play some more of the frenetic and extremely tense multiplayer.

Enslaved: Odessy to the West – Combine some of the best acting in terms of delivery/writing/facial expressions with pretty mediocre game play and gorgeous art design and the end result is… eh… above average.

H.A.W.X. 2 – I actually sort of liked the arcadey original (an air-combat game where you can drift? why not!), but this sequel was a soulless, hackneyed downgrade with an awful My First International Military Thriller type story.

The Polynomial – This one just gave me motion sickness.

Robot Unicorn Attack – Just writing out the game’s title made me laugh and want to play it again. ALWAYS.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent – The scariest game product of any media I’ve ever consumed. At one point it gave me a physical reaction enough to make me slam my hands down on the keyboard.

Pac Man Championship Edition DX – Eat ghost trains. ALWAYS.

Epic Dungeon – Bought this Indie Arcade game for 80 Microsoft space bucks (i.e. $1) and I’ve ended up playing it more than some XBLA games I paid $10 for. Great to play while listening to a podcast or your own playlist.

For the most part, AT&T was pretty dead on about a lot of the technological innovations since these ads were made in 1993. However, my sentiments pretty much line up exactly with commenter nutellaontoast: ‘It’s amazing that the only prediction they got wrong﻿ is who was going to bring it to us…’

You’ve probably heard some vague information about Particle Accelerators. You’ve probably heard that they smash atoms together and make science happen, but have you ever wondered how exactly they accelerator particles to near light speed? With the video above, you can have the process demonstrated to you step-by-step by a very intelligent sounding man. And in case the video doesn’t make it clear, that giant magnetic ring is massive. Or maybe just large, seeing as they called it the Large Hadron Collider (pictured below). The diameter of the larger circle is 17 miles.

Still curious about these atom obliterating magneto-donuts? Perhaps wondering just what would happen were a person to come into contact with one of these high energy particle beams? Well, as it turns out, there is one man who could answer that question: Anatoli Bugorski.

This unlucky Russian scientist had what could be called one of the worst days in history when he went to fix some malfunctioning equipment in the Soviet Particle Accelerator, also known as the U-70 Synchrotron (which I think is a way cooler name than Large Hadron Collider). Apparently all of the built in safety mechanisms were malfunction as well, because when Anatoli stuck his head into the part of the accelerator where particles are moved to a faster part of the contraption, he got blasted by a beam of super fast protons. He reported feeling no pain, but did see a flash ‘brighter than a thousand suns’. Anatoli was incredibly lucky to survive the 200,000 Rads of radiation that pulsed through his skull (500-600 is supposed to be lethal). His health problems were many, but surprisingly minimal considering he was struck by particles moving near the speed of light. Immediately after the accident the left side of his face swelled up considerably. That side also hasn’t aged since the accident after becoming paralyzed from nerve damage. He also lost hearing in his left ear, becomes much more fatigued by mental work, and now suffers from a rare type of seizure. He is still alive to this day and lives with his wife and son.

The accident never game Anatoli Bugorski the super powers he needed to become Proto-Man, smasher of atoms.

I lack any real talent for right about music, so I’m just going to list these in order. 2010 was the first year I really started listening to new albums within a few weeks (or months) of their release, so I felt I could actually put a list together. I also embeded a few of my favorite songs from these albums though because of copyrights you might have to go to youtube to see them.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – The Social Network Soundtrack

Yeasayer – Odd Blood

Janelle Monáe – The Arch Android

Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes

Emeralds – Does It Look Like I’m Here

Surfer Blood – Astro Coast

Some other albums I really liked (or at least want to listen to more).